To reliably contact emergency services such as the police or fire department today, a user may initiate a landline telephone call to a public safety answering point (PSAP), such as 911. While such calls can be made by cellular telephone, the PSAP is not always aware of the precise location of the caller. This is not an issue with landline telephones, since the location of the landline telephone is pre-associated with a particular physical address. Even with GPS systems now built into many cellular phones, the current location is often not properly communicated to or utilized by the PSAP, and GPS and other locating technologies often do not work in certain environments, such as indoors.
Moreover, depending upon where a person is at the time that the emergency occurs, precious time may be lost in getting to a landline telephone to initiate the emergency call. This may be true even in a home, where the emergency may occur in a room separate from the landline telephone. And, many homeowners now rely solely on cellular telephones and do not have access to a landline telephone. It would therefore be useful to provide alternative means for initiating emergency communications in a reliable manner.